140 A Rediscovered Mbumba various sectors of their territory (fi g. 3). On the other hand, the “long-necked” mbumba archetype occurred little if at all among the Tsogho. I reassured myself that this was the exception that confi rmed the rule. This unusual sculpture remained in my memory. At the end of Finding Time Again, Marcel, confronted by an ultimate “reminiscence” as he stumbles over two “poorly laid cobblestones,” refuses to pass up the chance to dig deeper into what this fortuitous event had brought forward: But this time, I was determined not to resign myself to not knowing, as I had on the day I tasted the madeleine dipped in tea. While not claiming to follow him on his transcendental path, like Proust I resolved to try to force my memory. It was not Venice and “two uneven cobblestones at the San Marco baptistry” that brought revelation to me, but rather the epic work Rites et Croyances du Gabon by Msgr. André Raponda-Walker, the Jean Pic de la Mirandole of all things Gabonese. Hurrying through the pages of this scripture, I found exul- FIG. 1 (right): “Bust with arms.” Tsogho, Gabon. Wood, metal, pigment. H: 33 cm. University of Iowa Museum of Art, Stanley Collection, inv. X1986.581. gest that they came from the same workshop. Everything matched up: the unusual shape of the copper eyes stretched into lozenges that are cut off at both extremities and pierced with identical pupils, the wide nose, and the distinct forehead with thick eyebrows and the traditional copper decoration running up its center. While this discovery was gratifying, it also challenged my carefully developed theory that such “busts with arms” should be considered Tsogho based on the statistically convincing number of works of this type collected in the FIG. 2 (below): Cover of the book by Bertrand Goy accompanying the show Tsogho, les icônes du Bwiti at Galerie Bernard Dulon from 7 September to 8 October 2016. Expected to be one of the highlights of the cultural season in Paris, this event is the fi rst dedicated to this art form. Reproduced by permission of Galerie Bernard Dulon, Paris. By Bertrand Goy OBJECT history Everyone has had the simultaneously titillating and slightly disturbing sensation of reliving an episode from the past without being able to place it in space and time. Such memories somehow take perverse pleasure in refusing to be clear—they taunt one as they remain lodged in the periphery of the mind. When one has the privilege of spending time studying artworks, there is the occasional exalting moment that every hunter of objects is familiar with when, while thumbing through the pages of some old and dusty document, a photograph of a statue or a mask teases a familiar place in one’s memory without quite awakening it. Some time ago while I was looking for examples of Tsogho sculpture to use in a book I was working on with Bernard Dulon (fi g. 2), a correspondent kindly sent me a document he had unearthed in his archives with an illustration of a “long-necked” fi gure that immediately elicited this feeling of déjà vu within me. There is no miraculous way to access a memory that seems like it should be within reach of the mind. Indeed, if we are to believe Proust in Swann’s Way, the best way is to not try too hard, since with the second sip of tea and bite of a madeleine, the memories begin to blur, and with the third they fade even more. A few days later, a spark ignited for no reason I can identify. The wooden head on the columnar neck in the photo I had received bore a certain resemblance to a bust in the Stanley Collection at the University of Iowa Museum of Art (fi g. 1). Giacometti’s term “bust with arms” seems an appropriate way to describe this characteristically Tsogho object. The “unfi nished” quality of parts of these anthropomorphic sculptures is due to the fact that the lower section is intended to be inserted into a reliquary bundle containing the bones of ancestors along with other vegetal, animal, or mineral materials. Together these two elements are called mbumba, and the object is used in the bwiti rituals in central southern Gabon and neighboring areas. While the bodies of these two reliquary fi gures really had nothing in common, their faces displayed striking similarities that could sug-
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